This year’s Whistler Film Festival will recognize three Canadian-born industry players with high-profile screen careers on both sides of the 49th parallel.

“One of things that we like to do is really put Canadian talent at the heart of everything that we’re doing at the festival and really shine a spotlight on it,” festival founder Shauna Hardy Mishaw said by phone.

Exemplifying that sentiment is the choice of British-Canadian star Kim Cattrall as this year’s Maverick Award recipient.

“She fits that word of maverick, right?” Hardy Mishaw said. “It’s a kind of unorthodox, independent-minded person. It’s somebody who goes out, takes risks.…We really felt that if anybody really embodied that word…she was really right up there.”

Cattrall will be featured in an evening conversation with fellow Canuck actor-director Jason Priestley next Saturday (December 6) and a retrospective of her career, which includes her famous role as the uninhibited Samantha on Sex and the City and her latest role on Canadian TV series Sensitive Skin.

Cattrall and Priestley, along with the Entertainment and Media Finance Group’s chairman Michael Hirsh, are also jury members for the festival’s Borsos Award for best Canadian feature film.

Film producer Don Carmody will receive the career achievement award next Thursday (December 4). Carmody launched his own company in the 1980s and has amassed over 100 film credits, including Porky’s, A Christmas Story, Chicago, Polytechnique, Resident Evil films, and more. He also produced Sean Garrity’s fashion fairy tale After the Ball, which will have its world premiere at the festival next Friday (December 5).

Dean DeBlois, a Quebec-born Hollywood export to Hollywood, will be honoured on December 6 with the Trailblazer in Animation Award. DeBlois wrote and directed the animated features Lilo and Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon 2 and also directed the documentary Heima, about Icelandic postrock band Sigur Rós.

Meanwhile, Toronto-born actor Sarah Gadon (Cosmopolis, Maps to the Stars) will be featured in Elle Canada ’s Spotlight On presentation on December 5. What’s more, four Canadian actors attending the festival with films—Camille Sullivan and Niall Matter (Ally Was Screaming), Dustin Milligan (Bad City), and Sarah Canning (I Put a Hit on You)—are being highlighted as WFF’s Rising Stars.

For full details about the festival, which runs from Wednesday to next Sunday (December 3 to 7), visit whisterfilmfestival.com/.